Today, February 1st marks the 20th anniversary of Green Day’s third album Dookie, an important album of 90’s rock. Nirvana’s Bleach and Nevermind ushered in the end of hair metal and the rise of grunge. Dookie is the accessible 90s punk youth battle cry.
With the release of Dookie on a major label, hardcore punks cried sellout at Green Day. They broke an unwritten code of underground music culture, making them outsiders to the outsiders. Maybe Green Day was trying to move away from preaching to the punk choir, and releasing Dookie on a major was a pragmatic move, a means to an end.
Dookie is credited for putting punk rock back into the mainstream spotlight in the 90s and 2000s. Dookie sonically is more pop friendly compared to their first two albums 39/Smooth (1990) and Kerplunk (1992). Green Day’s Dookie shows a band that is defiant even to the underground culture it came from (Gilman Street punk scene of Berkeley, CA), that all rules (underground or mainstream) can be broken when necessary, that you can define your own success, staying true to your artistic voice, answering to no one, and record labels and fanboys can get all get the finger if they don’t act right!
Side note trivia: Dookie was out the same year the original MTV’s Real World San Francisco (1994) aired.
Green Day “Longview”
Green Day “Welcome to Paradise” (reworked version of previous release track from Kerplunk)
Green Day “Basket Case”
Green Day “When I Come Around” (San Francisco’s Bart/Muni underground station and Broadway/Columbus intersection makes background cameo)
Green Day “She”
VH1 Documentary on Green Day’s Dookie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lRYR38B3sc
